


Books have scents too...

by BluSkates



Series: DomesticP is my jam! [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Flirting, M/M, Meet-Cute, Skating, Step sequences, we have always lived in the castle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 00:03:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10685640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BluSkates/pseuds/BluSkates
Summary: I just can't stop myself, I want to write about Felix all day! Okay, so update. Yuuri lives in the attic, yup I total make multi Jane Eyre references on that. No Viktor in this one because he's just a fart in a car at this point. Yuri is a distracted but awesome mum. Felix talks books with Yuuri and then goes to skating where he meets a "totally cute Beta guy!" Go ahead, guess the guy's last name... of course! Because Russia's not a HUGE country or anything.Another love letter for Domestic Prowess for creating this fabulous universe for me to play in.





	Books have scents too...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DomesticProwess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DomesticProwess/gifts).



“Yuuri, do you have any scent blockers? I’m out.” Felix entered the Japanese man’s _new room_ without knocking. Since his mother’s delivery the uneasy truce between the children and the incomer had bloomed into a real friendship. The eldest child particularly turning to Yuuri for advice and chats often.

Yuuri sat up. He seemed to be doing a little better these days. “Yeah I have an unopened box in the top drawer. Take ‘em. I won’t need 'em,” Felix saw Yuuri’s eyes fall as the Japanese man realized that his chances of going back to his normal life were gone. A secondary gender is supposed to be just that _secondary_ , but in the Nikiforov household it was a disability, a fact that Felix worried about with increasing frequency. Much like his mother, and his new friend, he was also an omega, which was why he felt like he was living with a countdown clock strapped to his back.

_Useless Omega Ass_ \- his father’s words. Spoken to another man, but Felix worried that one day his father would hand him over to a man, an alpha, with words that echoed those.

“Thanks.” Felix opened the drawer and dug out the box. “I’m headed to the rink for my lesson. Did you want to come with me?”

Yuuri looked sheepishly up at the young man. “I don’t think your father would like that.”

“Well, Dad’s away… business… he’d never know.” Felix heard the snap in his voice and regretted it instantly but he was tired of everyone giving way to _The Great Viktor Nikiforov_ who was little more than a weekend visitor in the house.

“Still, I wouldn’t want to put your mother in that situation.” Felix understood. He had desperately wanted to show Yuuri his footwork, which was inspired by the incredible former figure skater sitting in front of him on a tiny bed in a gloomy room. But he was happy to see that Yuuri worried about how his actions might have a consequence on his mother. The two men really bonded after the birth of his little sister. They family was still on eggshells hoping the little baby would come home soon.

“You’re almost done.” Felix came over and sat on the bed, tapping the book in the raven haired man’s lap. “Did you like it?”

“Yeah, I didn’t really focus on Russian literature. English was my minor, but I did like reading.” Felix had been giving Yuuri a steady supply of books since his exile to the third floor. “It helped me understand Russians a little better.”

Felix snorted a laugh at that, “well, know this, we aren’t all throwing ourselves underneath trains." The boy leaned in closer, as if to share a dark secret, "some of us skate.”

Yuuri laughed and nudged the boy with his leg. It was good to hear Yuuri laugh again, unguarded. “No, I mean that this story is a romance. It’s horrid and gory and has a terrible ending, and yet in this country, it’s a romance.”

“English literature’s not like that?”

“Some is, most isn’t. Besides when I talk about English literature I guess I really mean American. That stuff is intense, but the payoff is worth it.”

“What do you mean?”

Yuuri squinted in thought at the boy and rose from his bed. Digging through one of the boxes he still hadn’t unpacked he found a book and handed it to Felix.

“ _We Have Always Lived in the Castle_.” Felix looked at the book and smirked, “thin.”

“Oh just you wait.” Yuuri took the book and smelled the back spine. “Books have an odor which lets you know what they are like. See I smelled this book,” holding up _Anna Karenina_ , “and I smell jasmine and aftershave. That means there’s a problem of love. The author’s masculinity gets in the way of his female protagonist’s ability to communicate her desires. She lives in a world that can’t understand her because she has to fight rules that she had nothing to do with setting up.” Yuuri set the tome aside and gingerly held the slender paperback, waving it under Felix’s nose, “now this one. This one smells of earth, trees, freshly baked overly sweet cookies, and rotten almonds. There’s a problem of nature, and isolation. People trying to fight their true natures by putting on masks. It’s feminine but deadly.”

Felix smiled at the seriousness of Yuuri’s words. “You thought about this a lot.”

Yuuri smiled back, “what else do I have to do? I live in your attic. Just call me Bertha Mason.”

“Who’s that? A friend?”

“I’ll let you read that one next, she’s a character in _Jane Eyre_.” Yuuri chuckled to himself but became thoughtful, “you might like her, Charlotte Bronte, the author, I mean. She was an alpha. And her sisters were all alphas, but they wrote about the struggle of being an omega. Jane’s an omega and she talks about being in charge of herself, and her fate.”

Felix nodded thoughtfully but Yuuri could see the eyebrows arch in confusion. One of the few little quirks that the boy got from his father.

“Their brother was an omega, and their father always demanded that the girls work hard, become teachers, all to fund their omega brother’s artistic ambition, which never really flourished. Their dad treated their brother like he was too delicate for the world, he couldn’t work and spent his life being sheltered in a way the girls didn’t. His art never developed because he was never allowed to develop.”

Felix grimaced. That was not a future the boy wanted for himself and he had begun making it clear. Lately Felix didn’t want to have anything to do with alphas. He would turn the channel if an alpha singer was on the radio, stop watching a movie if the tones seemed pro-alpha, and almost lost it last week when they were watching _American Horror Story: Omega In Chains_. Yuuri could understand but he didn’t want the boy to become prejudiced. “But the Jane character. She’s independent?”

“Well, yes and no. She’s independent, and even when tragedy falls she draws a strength from within herself, but always works and repays debts to others. But at the end of the book she chooses to return to Rochester to be a wife and mother.”

Felix blew an aggravated breath out.

“No, you missed the point.” Yuuri reached out to focus the young man. “She chose that. She wanted it. Being a mother doesn’t make you weak, just like getting a nursing degree doesn’t make you strong. It’s about deciding what you want and being strong enough to chase it.” Yuuri could tell that he was still very uncomfortable with the traditional role that his secondary gender would try to force upon him. _‘I’ll never let him read The Handmaid’s Tale’_ , Yuuri thought sourly.

***

“Felix!” Yakov hollered from the barrier. The boy had been buried in that book since he showed up at the rink. “Get out of that book and pay attention!”

Felix snapped his head up. Mila was skating over with a smirk on her face shaking a finger at him.

“Shameful.” She reached up and plucked the book from his hand, placing it on the barrier wall behind him. “Come, as punishment you are running through testing patterns.”

“Oh, Mila…” Felix began to whine.

“Don’t ‘Oh Mila’ me! I’ll make you do the Hickory Hoedown with one more huff!” With that Felix skated to starting position and launched into the most challenging test pattern he had passed. Hopefully Mila would be happy and they could work on jump combinations soon after.

The rest of the rink time was divided between Felix’s short program and focusing specifically on jump combos. Felix was a natural spinner, but he really excelled in step sequences. He was the only member of the rink attempting and accomplishing level four footwork.

Mila called him over after his last run through. “Felix, it’s amazing. The jumps need a little tweaking, and you traveled off center in two of your spins, but the footwork, it’s brilliant.” Mila was fair with praise, unlike Yakov who never gave it, or Georgi who gushed it. He could see the question forming in her head. His mother’s footwork was passable, but never strong, which is why he would usually default to a Beilman serpentine. His father was technically proficient, but no Yuzuru Hanyu.

“It’s Yuuri. I went back and watched his performance at the GPF and his last nationals.” He saw his coach scrunch her pretty face and he chuckled, rolling his eyes. “Okay, yes, he flubbed every jump.. Hell, he waxled -- twice! But go and watch it, the footwork is strong, beautiful in fact.”

Mila shrugged, impassive, “well if that’s what has you moving so elegantly, I’m happy. You’re debut in senior’s next year is going to be amazing. See you tomorrow.” With that the redhead skated away to begin her own work.

Felix was glad to not have to answer. He had no intention of skating next year. If his teachers agreed he would move into college prep courses and work hard in cram school. There would be no more room for skating, and Felix could honestly he couldn’t care less.

He turned to look for his book, only to see a taller dark haired boy thumbing through it. Scowling he skated over, “hey, that’s mine.”

The boy looked a little startled and blushed quickly, “sorry. I can’t read English, but the cover looks cool.” He handed over the book. “I’m Talik.” He extended his hand, which Felix took skeptically.

“Felix.”

“I know.”

Felix arched an eyebrow, “uhm, you do?”

“Yeah. I mean, wait, that sounded weird.” Talik swizzled wide a pace back to create room between them. Felix could smell anxiety spread over this boy’s body. But other than that he could only smell his body wash. Good sign, he was probably a Beta. “It’s... this is a small rink.”

“This is an enormous rink. This is literally the biggest rink in all of Russia.” Felix swizzled equally wide forward, closing the space Talik had created. Talik was very cute when he was flustered. Felix began having to fight the smile from bubbling to his lips.

“Yes, true. That’s why my family moved to St. Petersburg.” Talik kept talking, too quickly, to try to cover up his mistake. “But I mean that while there are a lot of skaters here, there are very few people who stand out like you.”

“So I stand out?” Felix was preening at this point; he swizzled wide back a step and cocked his head smiling up at the taller boy.

Talik’s eyes brightened. He could see the gorgeous boy was toying with him. For the first time he didn’t really mind feeling like he was the mouse in a cat’s paw.

“Yes, my brother pointed you out,” Talik turned to indicate the taller man skating over to them.

“Is my idiot brother bothering you?” A deep voice asked.

“Not enough to complain about.” The cute boy and his brother laughed at this. Felix eyed the taller man, “you were talking to my mother at my father’s last competition.”

“Yes, I’m Otabek Altin. I took a ballet class with your mother a very long time ago.” Otabek looked a little sad.

“Dark ages.” Talik knocked his brother’s arm. Felix was distracted from Otabek’s sad eyes by Talik’s smiling ones. Also, damn they were so brown they were practically black. How did that weird American put it, "two drops of sherry in a crystal glass". What was the crazy woman's name, he'd have to ask Yuuri.

“Well, I have to be going. It was nice to meet you both.” Felix indicated toward the locker room. Otabek excused himself quickly allowing the two younger people to say goodbye on their own.

“So, I’ll see you again here?” Talik asked hopefully.

“Yeah, I mean, you could always just come over to my house. I don’t live far, and I could tell you about this book.” Felix could have bitten his tongue in half. No cute boy wants to talk books!

“Yeah, that’d be cool. Those girls look mental.” He tapped the cover one last time.

“They kinda are.” Okay, so he found the one cute Beta boy that wanted to talk books.

***

“Mum!” Felix exploded into the house tossing his skate bag down on the floor with a heavy thud. The twins looked up from the TV laughing at their older brother.

“In here” Yuri yelled from the kitchen. Felix followed the voice only to be greeted with work orders. “Good, you can help with dinner.”

“Mum, I met the cutest boy today.” He began gushing.

“That’s nice, can you get the cabbage from the fridge?” Yuri put the chopped veg into the blender and began to mash it into baby food for Lev. “Go upstairs and ask Yuuri to come down. I can’t remember what else I add to this. I think it’s ginger, but it might not be.” Yuuri yelled over the blender.

Felix pulled the cabbage out of the fridge, placing it in the colander in the sink to be chopped later and trudged upstairs.

‘Yuuri, Mum needs you for baby food,” Felix sulked but then brightened. “Oh my gosh, I met a guy. A total cute Beta guy.”

Yuuri looked a little worried. He hadn’t really left the room since being moved there by Viktor. It wasn’t a command but it was understood. The two families were going to be separated for the foreseeable future.

Felix rolled his eyes, “Dad’s not home. Also you aren’t asking me about the guy. You should be asking me about the totally cute Beta guy I met today.”

Yuuri sighed, being 14 was so hard. “I’m sorry, tell me everything.”

“Okay well, I think he's a little older, he’s definitely taller. Oh, his eyes" Felix grabbed Yuuri's hand and led him into the corridor. "Who's that crazy American woman... she wrote about flies?"

"Emily Dickinson. And it wasn't really about..."

"Well she got it right, his eyes were so dark and gorgeous. He’s new to the rink, his whole family just moved here. So I get first dibs.”

“You can’t call dibs on humans.” They locked arms and walked down the stairs to the kitchen.

Felix pushed the kitchen door open, Yuri was spooning the veg slop into a bowl and looked up. “Ah, good. Ginger?”

“Cumin, it’s good for the immune system and the taste is milder. This was celery?” Yuuri looked into the unappetizing bowl.

“Oh, yeah, he’s Otabek’s little brother. Mum you remember your friend, right?” Felix could feel the room stop. Even Lev stopped, and he was one. “What?”

“Otabek Altin?” Yuri asked quietly. Yuuri crossed the room and put a supportive hand on the delicate shoulder.

“Yeah, well, not Otabek, Talik, his younger brother.” Felix looked from one Yuri to the other. “I asked him to come over soon. That was okay, right?”

“Of course!” Both Yuri’s said. Too quickly and too loudly.

**Author's Note:**

> There is an awkward conversation with Nikolai, a really bad fight with dad, and an unfortunate revelation. I'm hoping not all in one chapter. Also I'm considering putting this into a single work called "One Big Happy Family" which will pick up where DP has Yuri's daughter in the hospital after an emergency delivery and moving forward from there. But I really want DP's permission before doing something like that.


End file.
